Is Domino's Pizza The Next Tech Giant?

The next big thing in tech could come from the unlikeliest of places: a pizza purveyor.

Domino’s took to tech early, introducing in 2008 the Pizza Tracker which marked its transition away from a pizza company that sold online to an e-commerce company that happens to sell pizza.

Today, more than half of Domino’s sales come through its digital channels and about half of those sales are coming through mobile channels with no sign of slowing.

"When more than half of your sales are coming through your digital channels, you are, by default, an e-commerce company,” says Domino’s chief digital officer Dennis Maloney. “That percent is just going to continue to grow and mobile is becoming a more and more important part of that equation.”

But there’s a lot more ahead for Domino’s changing business model and how that intersects with technology. “Domino’s shifted gears from the traditional quick-serve restaurant marketing model over the past five years, where companies would bring out this is the pizza of the month or whatever and it was a never ending revolving door of new products,” said Mr. Maloney. “We’ve moved more into actually launching into technologies that we expect to be around for a longer period of time.”

Among them are artificial intelligence, drones, autonomous vehicles and voice technology. And that’s just a slice of what’s coming.

“We have a lot of people working on the current stuff, a bunch of people working on what’s next, and then there are people that are working on what’s next and next and even what’s next after that,” Mr Maloney said. “It’s going to be just a core part of our business for a long time moving forward, so we need to be really forward thinking if we’re going to lead.”